The centrality of martyrdom in Islam

Concerning the declaration by the boyish and charming president of Iran that martydom—i.e., suicide mass murder of innocents for the sake of “God”—is the very core of the Iranian state, jihad expert Dr. Andrew Bostom (he’s an actual doctor, by the way, not a Ph.d) dropped me this note:

“Martyrdom” operations are held in the highest esteem by the core Muslim sacred texts, although this is deliberately obfuscated by Muslim apologists who are quick to point out how “suicide” is forbidden, putatively, in Islamic teaching. Professor Franz Rosenthal, the great American scholar of Islam, who, 50 years ago, translated Ibn Khaldoun’s classic Introduction To History, also wrote a seminal essay entitled “On Suicide in Islam” in 1946, in which he observed:

While the Qur’anic attitude toward suicide remains uncertain, the great authorities of the hadith leave no doubt as to the official attitude of Islam. In their opinion suicide is an unlawful act…. On the other hand, death as the result of “suicidal” missions and of the desire of martyrdom occurs not infrequently, since death is considered highly commendable according to Muslim religious concepts. However, such cases are no[t] suicides in the proper sense of the term.

And I found this fascinating report by the early American naval hero John Paul Jones when he fought with the Russian navy. Jones’ wrote a letter to Prince Potemkin dated June 20, 1788 while Jones commanded Russian naval ships, about a naval engagement with the Turkish fleet (outside Kimbourn) involving an unsuccessful martyrdom operation planned by the Muslim sailors [from, Life and Character of John Paul Jones-A Captain in the Navy of the United States, John H. Sherburne, 1825, p. 308]:

…for it was the intention of the Turks to attack us and board us, and if we had been only three versts further the attempt would have been made on the 16th [June 1788] (before the vessel of the Captain Pacha ran aground in advancing before the wind with all his forces to attack us,), God only knows what would have been the result…The Turks had a very large force, and we have been informed by our prisoners that they were resolved to destroy us, even by burning themselves, (in setting fire to their own vessels after having grappled with ours.) [note added by Jones: Before their departure from Constantinople, they swore by the beard of the Sultan to execute this horrible plan…if Providence had not caused its failure from two circumstances which no man could forsee.]

My first thought on reading John Paul Jones’s account was surprise that as early as 1788, even before the Constitution, the U.S. was involved in military actions against Muslims. [Note: In fact that is not correct; I assumed from the description that Jones was serving in the U.S. Navy under a common command with the Russians, which I had never heard of; in fact, which is not stated in the quoted passage, Jones was serving in the Russian navy at the time as a mercenary.] My second thought was that “martyrdom” in battle is obviously not as fiendish as walking onto a subway car and blowing scores of unsuspecting civilians into bloody fragments. But it’s not what we would exactly call normal behavior, either, even in war. This was not a matter of one soldier or airman killing himself in order to harm the enemy; this was a matter of the captain of the Turkish ship trying to lash his own ship onto the American ship and set his own ship on fire in order to trap both crews in a deadly inferno. What the eminent historian of ancient Rome, J.B. Bury, said of Arabs is true of Muslims as a whole—that they’re undesirable either as friends or foes. The only rational way to deal with these people is to deal with them as little as possible. Which requires that they be isolated and contained, not “engaged” with and democratized. Oh, where is the George Kennan of our time?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 29, 2005 08:53 PM | Send